food. “I’m not hungry. Aren’t you even curious where I went?”
“I imagine you went to Bergdorf’s to work off your irritation,” he said dryly. “How much did you spend?”
Was that actually what he thought? If so, then he really didn’t know her at all. Even so, for the sake of the baby, she decided to try one last time to salvage their marriage. “I’m not irritated, Holden. I’m…horrified by the solution you suggested. We need to talk about this.”
He folded the paper and set it aside. He’d never been a terribly demonstrative man, but at the moment his expression was so damningly remote that it made her shiver. It matched his tone when he replied, “I believe we already have.”
“We didn’t really discuss anything,” Lauren argued. “You issued an ultimatum.”
One of his eyebrows rose in challenge. “Yes, and you did the same.”
She had. And she’d meant it. She could not, she would not, destroy the miracle growing inside her. Lauren sucked in a breath and straightened her spine. This made twice in one day she wasn’t going to back down. “I’ll be moving out. I found a place to live this afternoon. A cottage in the country.”
Just thinking about a skyline of leafy trees rather than steel, stone and glass made it easier to breathe.
Holden blinked twice in rapid succession. It was the only sign that her words might have surprised him. Then he inquired with maddening detachment, “Will you require any help packing? Maria’s gone for the day, but Niles is still here.”
Lauren’s composure slipped a notch. “That’s it? I’m leaving, our marriage…our marriage is ending, and that’s all you have to say?”
“If you’re expecting me to fall on my knees and beg you to stay, you’ve been watching too much daytime television.” He steepled his fingers then. “Of course, if you’ve changed your mind about the situation…”
“It’s not a situation. It’s a baby, Holden. We’re having a baby.”
The tips of his fingers turned white. “You’re having a baby. I do not want children. You understood that. You agreed to that when we got engaged,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t think it was possible. The doctors had told me—”
“You agreed.”
“So that’s it?” Lauren said softly.
“Hardly, but the lawyers will have to figure out the rest.”
Had she really expected him to change his mind? She swallowed as another, more unnerving question niggled. Had she wanted him to?
Their relationship had never included fireworks. Even at the beginning, when everything was new and should have been exciting, true sparks had been in short supply. What had it been based on? she wondered now. Mutual interests? Mutual respect? Gratitude for the fact that Holden had accepted her, reproductive defects and all?
Lauren frowned. “Why did you marry me, Holden? Do you love me? Did you ever?”
He studied her a long moment before tipping his hands in her direction. “Why don’t you ask yourself those same questions?”
As she folded clothes and placed them in her suitcases, Lauren did. She didn’t like the answers she came up with.
CHAPTER THREE
GAVIN noticed two things about his tenant: she went to bed early and she kept to herself.
She had been living in the little cottage for nearly a month. Her lights were always out by eleven and he’d only bumped into her twice, not including the day she’d moved in with only one small van full of belongings and a check to cover the rent for an entire year. He’d requested only the first month’s amount, but she’d insisted on paying the remainder up front and signing a lease, which he’d hastily drawn up on his computer.
In truth, he hadn’t expected her to return at all. He’d figured her trip to the country had been a fluke and she would reconsider her decision to move here. For all he knew, she’d had a spat with her husband and once they’d kissed and made up she would regret her impulsiveness. He knew he was regretting his. But two days after shaking his hand while standing in the dusty cottage, she had come back with her spine straight, her gaze direct and determined.
She’d been all business that day, although he thought he’d detected exhaustion and maybe a little desperation behind her polite smile and firm handshake. Both had him wondering, but he’d managed to keep his curiosity in check. Not my business, he told himself.
On their two subsequent meetings, both of which had occurred at the mailbox out by the road, they’d exchanged greetings and the expected pleasantries, but they hadn’t lingered as they had that first day on his porch. Nor had they spoken at any length.
Gavin found that he wanted to.
He was only human, and the enigmatic Lauren Seville inspired a lot of questions. What was the real story? The bits and pieces he knew certainly didn’t add up.
For starters, women who looked and dressed like Lauren didn’t rent tiny cottages in the country. Gabriel’s Crossing was quaint and its four-star inn and three bed-and-breakfasts attracted their fair share of tourists year-round, but the town was hardly a mecca for New York’s wealthy. It had shops and restaurants, but it lacked the upscale boutiques, trendy eateries, day spas and high-end salons that a woman from Manhattan’s Upper East Side would not only expect but require.
And then there was the not-so-little matter of a wedding ring. The gold band and Rock of Gibraltar he’d noticed that first day had been on her finger when Lauren had handed Gavin her check for the rent.
Seeing it had prompted him to ask, “Will anyone be joining you in the cottage?”
She’d answered with a cryptic “Eventually.”
Gavin assumed that someone would be her husband. But a month later the man had yet to put in an appearance. Spat, he wondered again? Or something bigger and more permanent?
“Not my business,” he muttered again and got back to work.
He’d long finished with the crown molding in the living room and had trimmed out the tall windows that faced the road. Per Lauren’s suggestion, he’d opted to stain both them and the mantel a rich mahogany. The room was coming along nicely, needing only a few patches in the plaster, fresh paint and a refinished floor to complete its transformation. Those could wait. He still had plenty of other projects to keep him busy. Indeed, every room in the house except the master suite had something that still required his attention. If this were a company site, a bevy of contractors would be working off a master list with the various jobs prioritized and deadlines for completion penciled in. But this project was personal and, well, cathartic, so Gavin worked at his own pace and on whatever suited his mood.
Today, it was laying the floor in the secondary downstairs bathroom. He’d chosen a tumbled travertine marble imported from Mexico. The sandy color complemented the richer-hued tiles he’d used on the walls. He planned to grout that later in the day—assuming he hadn’t succumbed to heatstroke by then.
He reached
